


Nooroo's Last Stand

by writer_slk



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst and Humor, Gen, Humor, Kwami Shenanigans, Nooroo Is a Troll, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 22:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16250648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writer_slk/pseuds/writer_slk
Summary: When Gabriel Agreste first put on the Butterfly Miraculous in hopes of gaining superpowers that would help him bring back his wife, he had very little to go on except the pictures from the Grimoire and a few vague legends.When Nooroo first met Gabriel, he knew the man was trouble. And although he was bound to obey the orders of the man who wielded the Miraculous, he was not bound to actually be helpful.In which Gabriel is clueless, and Nooroo is a troll.





	Nooroo's Last Stand

When Gabriel Agreste put on the butterfly-shaped brooch for the very first time, he hadn’t expected Nooroo.

He _had_ expected some sort of… thing. He couldn’t read the language the book was written in, but the pictures of the strange animal-shaped things were prevalent. He assumed that this would be some sort of spirit guide that would walk him through the usage of his new superpowers. He just hoped it would either speak French or play charades well enough to be of use to him.

It was past midnight and all of the household help, save for the night watchman, had gone home. Gabriel sat in his personal office with the door shut. He had chosen this location for two key reasons: first, it was far away from the security office, where the night watchman would still be awake, and second, it was also far away from Adrien’s bedroom. Gabriel wasn’t sure if the spirit guide’s arrival would be associated with noise or light, and he certainly did not want to attract attention.

Gabriel frowned down at the brooch, which glinted up at him coldly from where it laid on the desk. He picked it up delicately and held it in his hands, feeling its weight and the smooth cold metal against his fingers.

He turned it over, then over again, and then he set his jaw firmly. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pinned it on.

No loud bangs. No flashes of light, or at least nothing noticeable behind his closed lids.

There was, however, a voice. Gabriel’s eyes flew open as soon as it started speaking and rested on a small purple creature that resembled a butterfly with a disproportionately large head. The wings were clearly more for show than for actually supporting the weight of the creature’s giant head for flight.

This was it. His spirit guide. Thankfully, it seemed to speak in perfect French.

“Greetings, oh sacred guardian,” the creature intoned. “Knight of the Order of the… Oh. You’re not quite what I expected. And this…” The little purple creature gestured around at Gabriel’s sterile office. “This isn’t the temple, is it?”

“No, my friend,” Gabriel said in a low, awed voice. “This isn’t your old home. But you and I are going to make quite the team.”

The creature eyed Gabriel rather suspiciously.

“So,” the creature said slowly, “am I to understand that you didn’t receive the Miraculous as… as a sort of gift?”

“No, it wasn’t a gift.” It wasn’t a gift at all. Gabriel had paid _dearly_ for it. His fingers went automatically to his pocket, in which there was a locket bearing a photograph of his beloved wife.

The creature looked at Gabriel for a long time. At first, the stare was blank and unreadable. Then the creature’s forehead wrinkled. Finally, it seemed to make up its mind about something, and it nodded.

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nooroo,” the little creature said.

“And what exactly are you, Nooroo?”

Nooroo seemed hesitant to answer, so Gabriel prompted him further. “I’ve seen pictures of your kind in the Grimoire, but I don’t understand what you do.”

“Oh, I do _lots_ of things,” Nooroo answered quickly. But then he fell silent.

Gabriel pursed his lips together, finding this small creature to be very unsettling. “Can you teach me how to use my power?”

“I certainly can,” Nooroo replied, and again, he said nothing further.

Gabriel was starting to feel suspicious. “And how can I trust you?” he asked.

Nooroo’s face looked a little nervous, and the little creature seemed to swallow hard. “I am bound to the Miraculous,” he finally explained, “and as part of that bond, I am obligated to obey your every command as long as you control the Miraculous.”

Gabriel’s heart leapt at this information, but outwardly, he maintained his cool composure.

“Is that so?” he mused. Nooroo nodded.

Gabriel stroked his chin.

“Very well.” Very well, indeed. “Nooroo, my name is Gabriel. But you shall call me… your master.” Gabriel felt dizzy with grandeur just _saying_ it.

Nooroo’s forehead moved in the tiniest trace of a facial spasm. Gabriel wondered about this, but when Nooroo spoke, his voice was the perfect model of submission.

“Yes, my master.”

“Nooroo, I wish to know how to use my powers.”

“Of course, my master. My master has seen the Grimoire, so certainly my master has read through it as well, has not my master?”

Gabriel gritted his teeth against Nooroo’s suddenly jarring speech pattern, but decided to ignore it for now. He was too close to getting what he wanted now to be worried about an overly servile spirit guide.

“I’ve not read it, but I’ve looked at the pictures,” he said. He realized immediately just how stupid _that_ sounded, so he quickly added, “I’m unfamiliar with the language of the book.”

“Ah. Of course. Of course.” Again, Nooroo’s tone did nothing to indicate a lack of respect toward Gabriel. “Well, even the pictures might have helped my master to discern that the Butterfly Miraculous gives my master the power to create champions imbued with superpowers of their own.”

“Yes. Yes, that is the power that I want to use, Nooroo. Tell me how to use it.”

“For one thing, my master needs to know that my master will require butterflies.”

“Butterflies?”

“Yes. The butterflies will be vessels that carry the energy for my master’s psychic bond to the individual my master chooses to imbue with powers.”

Butterflies. Right now, it was after midnight. Butterflies were daytime creatures. Gabriel deflated like a kid on Christmas day whose parents forgot to buy the batteries.

“Where do butterflies sleep, Nooroo?”

Nooroo shrugged. “I don’t know the answer to my master’s question.”

Gabriel grimaced with frustration. Nooroo was bound to the _Butterfly_ Miraculous. He was clearly styled after a _butterfly_. Gabriel would have expected him to have some basic scientific knowledge about the animals. And Gabriel had already waited so long for this moment.

Grudgingly, he forced himself to face the fact that he would have to wait a little more.

“Then we’ll try tomorrow. Goodbye, Nooroo.”

He removed the Butterfly Miraculous.

Gabriel blinked down at Nooroo, and Nooroo blinked back up at him.

“Ah... Nooroo, you came out of the Miraculous when I put it on, didn’t you?”

Nooroo nodded.

“Then why are you still here now that I’ve taken the Miraculous off?”

“Now that my master has accepted the Miraculous, my master would have to renounce the Miraculous in order to make me lie dormant.”

Renounce the Miraculous? Gabriel wondered what that meant. It probably meant giving up the powers. Was it a temporary thing? Could he get them back?

He’d had enough of looking stupid for one day, though, so he wasn’t going to ask. He would just keep Nooroo with him for tonight.

“Are you able to stray far from the Miraculous?” Gabriel asked Nooroo.

“Yes, my master. I can go quite far from it, if I so desire.”

“Well, _I_ don’t desire that. I can’t have you escaping from me before I’ve learned to use the Miraculous’ power. From now on, you are to stay right by my side at all times.”

As though sucked in by a powerful gravitational force, Nooroo suddenly plunged straight toward Gabriel’s waist. He pressed up hard against Gabriel’s side.

Gabriel took a step away from Nooroo. Or rather, he tried. But the purple creature easily moved with him, never breaking contact. Gabriel lifted his arm and stared down at him.

“Nooroo, I didn’t mean that I actually want you attached to my waist.”

“But my master said—”

“You must stay _close_ to me, but you may not actually touch me unless circumstances require it.”

“Close to my master? Define close.”

“Within a few meters.”

“I understand, my master.” Nooroo detached himself from Gabriel’s side and withdrew a comfortable distance away.

Gabriel looked toward the door of his office. It wasn’t far from the office to the door of his bedroom. And it was late. Surely, it’d be safe to bring Nooroo with him up a flight of stairs and through a few meters of hallway.

But just to be sure, Gabriel strode to the door, opened it, and then cautiously stuck his head out and looked down the hall. A streak of purple flew past him, barreling right out into the hallway.

“ _Nooroo_ ,” Gabriel reprimanded in the harshest whisper he could manage.

Nooroo blinked at him innocently from the middle of the hallway, which was thankfully empty.

“Nooroo, get back into this room. What do you think you’re doing?”

Nooroo frowned even as it flew past Gabriel and back into the office. “My master said that my master wanted me to stay within a few meters of my master. Did I not obey my master’s orders, my master?”

Gabriel sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“First, Nooroo, it’s important that you remain _hidden_ from other people. You must stay within a few meters of me at all times, and you must not put yourself in a position where someone other than me might see you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my master.”

“Second, when you are personally addressing me, use proper second person pronouns.”

“Second person pronouns, my master?”

“You. Your. Yours. Do not call me ‘my master’ when one of those would suffice. Is that clear?”

“Yes, my ma— ah, you. Yes, you.”

Gabriel rubbed his hand over his face and tried to remember if he still had any wine left in his bedroom. It was going to be a long, tense, night.

* * *

Gabriel took the next day off. If he were going to keep Nooroo nearby and hidden, he was going to have to find a place for him to hide. He had hefted Nooroo in one hand yesterday to get a sense of his weight, and he had decided that the creature was light enough that he could hide in an inner pocket inside one of Gabriel’s standard jackets without affecting the way the jacket hung on Gabriel’s body too much. But none of those jackets currently had a pocket big enough to actually accommodate a creature of Nooroo’s size.

So instead, when he woke, Gabriel went to his closet and searched for something that would work in the short-term. He settled on an oversized sweatshirt with a kangaroo pocket and silently cursed the very fact that he _owned_ this piece of garbage, and so much more the fact that that he was about to wear it.

When Nathalie arrived, he called her and told her he was leaving his jackets outside of his bedroom door, along with instructions for his tailor on precisely how to modify them to give them a suitable inner pocket.

“Have the tailor put a rush on these,” he added to Nathalie when she stood outside his room, collecting his garments. Gabriel was peeking around his barely-opened door, trying to talk to Nathalie while hiding the shameful view of the disastrous sweatshirt and lounge pants combination he was wearing. “This should be her top priority. I don’t care what it costs.”

Nathalie nodded calmly. She picked up the jackets and started to turn away.

“Oh, and Nathalie? After you take these to the tailor, could you please procure a butterfly net for me?”

“Of course, sir.” She walked away.

* * *

As he waited for Nathalie to arrive with the net, Gabriel had breakfast delivered from the kitchen directly to his bedroom, and, as an afterthought, offered Nooroo some of the food from his plate. He wasn’t sure if spirit guides needed to eat, but it seemed to be the polite thing to do.

Nooroo devoured the food rather greedily, then looked up at him with what Gabriel could only describe as a puppy dog expression, clearly hoping for more. Gabriel looked pointedly away, although he made a mental note to have the kitchen deliver more food than usual for lunch.

An hour later, the butterfly net arrived. Adrien had just left for his morning piano lesson. This was the closest thing to the perfect time that Gabriel was going to get. It didn’t matter how ridiculous the sweatshirt looked, he decided. He had no desire to wait.

With Nooroo hidden away in his kangaroo pocket and the pink ( _pink!_ ) butterfly net in his hands, Gabriel walked out of his room, down the stairs, and out the front door of his mansion. He kept his shoulders hunched over, tried his best to shuffle his feet, and kept his eyes firmly fixed on the ground. Thankfully, the mansion had plenty of space between the narrow flower gardens that surrounded the walls and the gates that kept the public on the street and off of his private property. So, while he knew that people could see them, he rather hoped that most of them would pay little attention to him, especially if he acted as un-Gabriel-like as he could and kept his head down.

When he rounded the corner of the mansion, he saw that he was in luck. There were currently no fewer than three butterflies cavorting in the sunlight over a patch of bright purple flowers planted near the wall. Pretty butterflies, with orange and yellow and black spots.

Gabriel cleared his throat and picked up the pink butterfly net purposefully. He swung it at one of the butterflies and swiftly clapped the opening of the net against the ground. He had caught the butterfly, all right, but he had also awkwardly thrown himself belly down into the flower beds in his exuberance.

He chose to focus on the positive. He trembled with excitement as he scooped the net upward, the butterfly still confined within the netting. He pressed the mouth of the net to his chest to ensure that it could not escape.

“Nooroo, tell me how to use my powers now,” he whispered to his kangaroo pocket. Nooroo poked his tiny head out, just barely, and gazed at Gabriel with large purple eyes.

“With all due respect, I advise you to wait until we are inside. I believe we’re being watched.”

Gabriel whipped around so fast that Nooroo barely had time to duck back inside the pocket. Outside the gate, a small crowd of gawkers had gathered. Some had cell phones raised; all were staring at the spectacle he had made of himself.

Gabriel gritted his teeth and turned away. He didn’t bother putting his head back down as he made his way back toward the mansion. As he ascended the front steps, he saw Nathalie staring at him from a window near the main door and wished he had lowered his head after all, just so that he could have skipped seeing _that_ expression on her face.

She was waiting for him when he entered the room, but he held up his hand, silently warding off any questions or comments she might be contemplating. She dutifully said nothing as he climbed up the stairs to the portrait of Emilie, pressed the combination of buttons, and was transported to the room which he referred to as his secret lair.

“Come out, Nooroo. There is no one to see you here.”

Nooroo obediently flew out of Gabriel’s pocket and looked around the room.

“Where are we?” Nooroo asked.

“My lair. This is where I intend to use my superpowers so that I’m not interrupted.” He carefully set the net on the floor. The trapped orange and black butterfly fluttered about, hardly able to lift up the filmy net that restrained it. Gabriel reached toward the pocket of his lounge pants, where he had stored the Miraculous before leaving his bedroom.

“I see,” Nooroo replied. “And where’s your window?”

“Window?”

“Yes. Your butterfly is going to have to get out of here somehow if it’s going to find someone with whom to share your power.”

Gabriel frowned. It was a good point. But he had designed the lair for secrecy and privacy, and not for butterfly traffic.

There was one small window high up on the wall. It was closed right now.

He reached up, stood on tiptoe… and yeah, there was no way he was going to be able to open it unless he could get a boost up. And there was no furniture in this room.

He sighed and stepped back onto the platform that would carry him back to the office.

* * *

Gabriel returned a few moments later, this time with a very undignified folding step stool in his hands. He could feel Nooroo’s eyes on him as he unfolded the stool underneath the window, climbed it, and slid the window open. There was a screen across the opening. He slammed his hand against it hard – the level of irritation he was feeling did a remarkably good job at allowing him to pop the screen off without issue – and climbed back down.

Gabriel reached into one of his lounge pants pockets and fumbled for the brooch. He pulled it out and frowned down at it.

He knew, from the pictures in the Grimoire, that he was supposed to be wearing it when he used his powers, so he didn’t bother to ask Nooroo about that. He pinned it to the hopelessly unfashionable sweatshirt. It _almost_ would have been worth it to wait until he had ordered a customized sleek outfit like the ones in those pictures.

He wondered idly how other wielders of the Miraculous had managed to come up with their costumes. _He_ was a fashion designer and had a team of seamstresses at his disposal, and given his line of work, no one would bat an eye at a request for an odd-looking suit, especially if he ordered it in several different sizes so that it wasn’t obvious that he wanted it just for himself. Surely, the same could not be said for all the wielders in the past. _The costumes in the book are probably an artist’s fabrications_ , he decided. _The real wielders probably wore sloppy, baggy sweatshirts in real life, too. Or whatever their culture’s equivalent of that was._

Gabriel picked up the net gingerly and tried to work out how to capture the butterfly inside his hands without allowing it to flit away. After a few moments of wrangling, he had the creature cupped inside his hands, unable to escape.

“Nooroo, now that I have the butterfly in my hands, how do I commission it to transfer power to another person?”

“Well,” Nooroo answered slowly. “It’s difficult to explain. You should be able to pick up on the emotions of people in the city even though you can’t see them. Have you noticed that yet?”

Gabriel shook his head.

“Well, try to close your eyes and focus on it. You’re looking for someone who is feeling strongly motivated toward justice.”

Gabriel closed his eyes and focused very hard, imagining that he was casting his mind out into the streets of Paris and seeing individuals there, imagining that he could sense their thoughts and feelings.

He… felt nothing of the sort. But now that he knew he was _supposed_ to be feeling it, he would try. He tried to picture someone out in the city who was feeling the weight of injustice. Perhaps something in his powers would guide his subconscious, and his imagination would conjure up the real circumstances of a real person if he just _tried_.

He racked his brain for a scenario. Suppose there was someone out there right now who had just been cut off in traffic. That might motivate someone to want justice, and it probably happened every minute of the day, so surely that was a real thing that was happening right now.

He tried to imagine what this imaginary person would be like, to better get in tune with their feelings. He imagined a portly middle-aged man who was just starting a mid-life crisis. He imagined that this person would be dressed horribly and drive a terribly unfashionable car. No, not a car. A minivan. With a family of stick-figure stickers affixed to the back window. Not one of the Star Wars-themed ones either. Just a plain, boring set. (No one could ever say that Gabriel was short on imagination. This was almost _fun_.)

“Do you feel anything?” Nooroo interrupted him.

“Yeah, sure,” Gabriel snapped. Then he cleared his throat and tried to regain his cool demeanor. “Yes, Nooroo. I can sense the need for justice all around.” It sounded good anyway.

“Excellent. Now focus your attention very hard on the butterfly. I must admit that I am rather vague on the details of how this part works, but past wielders have described it as a feeling that they’re developing a rapport with the butterfly.”

Gabriel frowned down at his hands, not daring to open them wide enough to get a good look at the butterfly inside, lest it flutter away and force him to recapture it with the net. He wasn’t sure how to develop a rapport with a butterfly. He imagined giving it a sympathetic smile and sharing a few personal stories.

This was idiotic. How long was this part supposed to take? About five seconds, he hoped, because that’s all he was going to give it.

He carefully climbed the step stool then. He teetered a little, and put his cupped hands against the wall to steady himself clumsily.

When he got to the top, he stuck his hands out the window and opened them carefully. He had to wiggle his fingers a few times to get the butterfly to actually take off. He watched as it fluttered lazily, first up, then down, down, down and across the street before disappearing into the park.

He climbed back down in frustration and raised an eyebrow at Nooroo, who floated there with rapt, wide eyes that conveyed utter faith that the process had worked. Gabriel suspected he actually knew differently.

“That wasn’t effective, was it?”

“I don’t believe so, master,” Nooroo admitted.

Gabriel huffed and stared up at the window. Something had gone wrong, and he wasn’t sure what it was. Perhaps it was a little harder than just snatching the first butterfly that you saw.

“Did I perhaps have the wrong kind of butterfly?”

“Perhaps,” Nooroo responded.

“What kind of butterfly am I supposed to use?”

Nooroo paused for a moment before he answered. “Well, they’re white.”

* * *

A few minutes later, Gabriel returned to his office through the secret elevator. Nathalie was waiting for him when he arrived, and if she was feeling any anxiety knowing where Gabriel had just been and guessing at what he had been doing, nothing of the sort appeared on her face.

When he looked at her, he suddenly remembered that he had left the pink butterfly net in his lair. And with that, he suddenly grew aware of just how tight the muscles in his neck and shoulders had become.

There had to be an easier way.

“Nathalie, please order a shipment of white butterflies to arrive here as soon as possible.”

Nathalie nodded curtly.

“Also, please arrange to have a new, larger window installed in my room, closer to the floor.”

“Your room, sir?”

“You know which room I’m talking about,” he snapped. She nodded again.

“Oh, and Nathalie? The new window must be something I can open and close at will with a remote control.”

* * *

When Nathalie updated him later that evening, she told him that the butterflies would arrive in two days.

“ _Two_ days? Did you tell them this was a rush order?”

“Yes, sir. We are paying quite a bit for them to bring in extra workers to spend the night preparing the shipment. Two days is really quite a remarkable turn-around—”

“Fine,” Gabriel snapped. He knew she was right, that two days _was_ much quicker than one might ordinarily expect. He knew he was being unreasonable with his expectations, but he missed his wife _so_ much.

“The good news, sir, is that you received two of your jackets back from the tailor this evening. I saw on your calendar that you have your meeting with the Wai-Feng associates tomorrow so I asked the tailor to return as many as possible today and return the rest upon completion.”

Gabriel nodded, grateful for her attention to detail. “Thank you, Nathalie. Good night.”

“Good night, sir.”

* * *

After a day of disappointment and aggravation, Gabriel was ready for a relaxing shower. He turned on the water to a blissfully hot temperature – just a few degrees short of scalding – and soon he felt the bathroom filling up with hot, damp air. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe it into his shoulders and neck to release their tension.

He turned down the temperature of the water streaming out of the showerhead just a bit, then stepped in. He closed his eyes and turned, allowing the hot streams of water to fall onto his shoulders and slide down his arms and back. Gabriel tried to imagine his stress being washed away with the water, tried to let go of more tension in his shoulders, his neck, his jaw. He inhaled deeply, breathing in more steam. He exhaled deeply too, observing as the motion caused his shoulders to drop, inviting him to let go of more tension there.

He opened his eyes…

… and found himself staring into Nooroo’s buggy purple ones.

“Gah!” he cried. He instinctively grabbed at the shower curtain and pulled it around his waist. “Nooroo!” he sputtered.

“You left me out in your bedroom,” Nooroo said with only the very slightest hint of reproach in his voice. “My orders are to stay within a few meters of you at all times.”

“Nooroo,” Gabriel intoned with barely-suppressed rage. “When I am in the shower, you are to remain _outside_ the shower stall. _Right_ outside the shower stall, where you shall keep your eyes averted until I have dressed myself.”

“Yes, master,” Nooroo replied with a nod. He phased through the shower curtain.

* * *

Gabriel woke early the next morning feeling more than a little anxious. Surprisingly, this had nothing to do with the Miraculous or with Nooroo or even with the butterflies.

He was nervous about the upcoming meeting with the Wai-Feng associates. Wai-Feng was a large clothing distributor in eastern Asia, a market which his fashion label had not yet successfully branched into. The company was sending some of their top-tier executives to meet with him, Gabriel, personally.

It was the kind of meeting which Gabriel would rather not attend, as he preferred to stick with designing and to allow the businessmen in his company to handle these matters, but his business advisor had insisted that he, personally, must meet with them. Gabriel had countered with a request that they handle the meeting via video messaging. The business advisor had turned down this suggestion too. The Wai-Feng associates were insisting on an in-person meeting. And one did not simply turn down any halfway reasonable request from a distributor like Wai-Feng. His business advisors had _insisted_ that he comply.

Gabriel tried on one of the newly-tailored jackets while still wearing his pajamas and ordered Nooroo into the pocket hidden inside. As he had anticipated, the jacket still hung very nicely on him. No one would suspect that he was carrying the tiny creature with him.

Gabriel shucked the jacket and carried on with his normal morning routine. He was meticulous today with his shaving and his hair styling. He dressed his best – trading the normal white jacket and red pants for darker, less distinctive colors. He kept the red and white tie, which was his favorite.

At the very end, he put the Miraculous into a small pocket inside his jacket, then ordered Nooroo back into the big one.

Ten minutes before his meeting, Gabriel went to a room near the main entrance which Nathalie had prepared as a conference room specifically for this meeting.

“Now remember what I’ve told you, Nooroo. You must remain _hidden_ during this meeting.”

“Yes, master,” Nooroo answered.

Gabriel nodded and exhaled nervously, pacing the floor.

Five minutes later, Nathalie entered the room and informed him that the associates, Mr. Wong and Ms. Liu, had arrived. He told her to allow them in, then stood up to greet them as he remembered being directed to do by his business advisor.

He waited until the two associates entered and had greeted him.

“Vice-President Wong, Director Liu. I am honored to meet you.” He bowed stiffly, the way he had been taught by his business advisor.

He accepted their business cards and he gave them his in return, then suffered through the usual small talk that he had been told to expect.

Finally, it was time to begin the serious negotiations.

And that’s when Nooroo started to hum.

It was quiet at first. Gabriel was only just aware of it, a soft, tuneless sort of sound. It almost sounded like it could be the hum of some electronic device, and he hoped that the two people sitting across the table from him would not notice it. Just in case, though, he adjusted his jacket in a way that would look natural and unnoticeable to the Wai-Feng associates but would also remind Nooroo of his orders.

It didn’t work. Nooroo’s humming actually got _louder_. Gabriel pressed his hand against Nooroo firmly through the jacket, still trying to keep his motions natural looking. He could see Mr. Wong narrowing his eyes at him, though. Gabriel desperately tried to hold on to his control over the situation.

“Ah, so as I was saying, Director Liu, your concerns about our label’s—” Nooroo’s pitch suddenly jumped up much higher in a kazoo-like glissando. Gabriel pressed _hard_ against Nooroo, hoping that Nooroo could _feel_ the implied threat.

“Help!” Nooroo squeaked. “Help! I’m being held prisoner!”

Gabriel felt his face reddening, though whether from embarrassment or rage, he wasn’t even sure himself. He stood up, thinking fast.

“Vice-President Wong, Director Liu, please excuse me,” he gasped. “I have a teenaged son and he thinks himself quite clever when he changes the ringtone on my phone.”

“I’m trapped in here!”

“I must take this,” Gabriel said hastily. “I am sorry for the interruption.”

Gabriel exited the room quickly as Nooroo continued to squeal. “I’m hidden inside his pocket! Please help me!”

Gabriel slammed the door behind him and strode far from the door so as to avoid being overheard.

“Nooroo!” he screeched in the quietest voice possible. “You are to remain _hidden_! Did you not hear my orders?”

“I _was_ hidden, master,” Nooroo replied, his face and voice as earnest in its innocence as ever. “Did you mean that I was supposed to remain _quiet_ as well?”

Gabriel was sure, now, that Nooroo was mocking him. And he was also equally sure that Nooroo wasn’t lying about the fact that he had to obey his orders.

He knew that he needed Nooroo to help him figure out that Miraculous, but he was going to have to find a way to bypass his antics.

* * *

That night, Gabriel made himself comfortable with his pajamas on and a cup of hot tea sitting on a nearby table. He sat down in a comfortable chair in his office with a notebook. He sat Nooroo down on his desk and ordered him to stay there for the duration of their conversation.

“Nooroo,” Gabriel said in a quietly authoritative voice. “My superpowers are not yet working. I have a shipment of butterflies coming in tomorrow, and I want that to be the last thing that delays my ability to put my plans into motion. I suspect that I’m missing some vital piece of information, and I suspect you know what it is.”

“Well, to be fair,” Nooroo responded, “you’re missing a _lot_ of information. The Miraculous and their powers have thousands of years of history behind them, and—”

“Just tell me the important things, Nooroo.”

“Define important,” Nooroo said, and Gabriel thought he could see the little creature squirming.

“Anything that would help me to use my powers for the first time would be important.”

“There are a lot of things I could tell you,” Nooroo replied, “all of which might be helpful to you to learn how to control and finetune your powers. I’m sorry, unless you can narrow your request down...”

Gabriel took a deep breath and tried to calm himself by imagining what he would be able to do to Nooroo when he no longer needed him.

“Fine, Nooroo,” Gabriel conceded. “Just tell me everything you know.”

“Very well. The first wielder of the Butterfly Miraculous was a woman from Ancient Egypt…”

Gabriel listened with determined intensity for the first hour. He filled up no fewer than ten of his notebook pages with brief notes that he jotted down, things that he would have to remember to order Nooroo to repeat in the future. Nooroo told long epic stories about some of the past wielders of the Butterfly Miraculous. Gabriel ignored his tea.

During the second hour, he stopped taking notes on everything that sounded remotely interesting; soon, he was just jotting down a word or two here or there. Nooroo moved on from stories about the past wielders of the Butterfly Miraculous to the story of the creation of something called kwamis, which if Gabriel understood correctly, were some sort of tangible representation of abstract ideas. Nooroo’s voice was beginning to grate on him, and everything was starting to sound dull. Gabriel drank the unpleasantly cold tea because it was better than doing nothing.

During the third hour, his attention completely faded. He was doodling fashion designs in the margins of his notebook, trying out several designs for the suit that he was going to have made for him once he had learned how to harness his new powers. Purple seemed to be a symbolic color for the Butterfly Miraculous. Gabriel preferred red, but purple was darker and more mysterious, and somehow that appealed to him.

Sometime during the fourth hour, he fell asleep in his chair.

When Gabriel found his consciousness returning during the middle of the night, it took him a moment to recognize the voice and to remember why Nooroo was speaking. He remained slumped over in the chair as he thought about opening his eyes and demanding that Nooroo stop talking. He could pick this back up in the morning, starting with the last thing he remembered Nooroo saying.

But he was warm and sleepy, and opening his eyes or exercising his voice seemed like more work than he wanted to do right now.

So instead, Gabriel tried to tune Nooroo out. Only, when he did so, he realized Nooroo’s voice was different now than it had been before. Gabriel kept his eyes closed as he pondered this.

The difference, Gabriel soon realized as his brain continued to wake up, was that Nooroo was speaking rapidly and very quietly. “… mirclswerrfusswthkwmenwvreettrstrnsfrmtn—”

Gabriel’s eyes snapped open.

“Nooroo, repeat that.” Nooroo jumped so hard he flew up almost a half meter off the table and flew in an agitated figure-eight pattern before slowly descending back to the table.

Nooroo’s eyes were large in a way Gabriel had never seen them before, and while Gabriel had never identified an open lack of disrespect in Nooroo’s facial expressions, he was certain he now knew what _open fear_ looked like. Gabriel’s heart leapt to realize that he was very close to something very important.

“Ah… repeat… yes,” Nooroo fumbled. “The first wielder of the Butterfly Miraculous was a woman from—”

“No, Nooroo. Not there. Start with the last sentence that you spoke just before I ordered you to repeat that.”

Nooroo took a deep breath and started again. “Thmrclswrrfss—”

“Louder, Nooroo, and slower.” Gabriel almost found Nooroo’s last-ditch efforts to stymie him to be cute, because he knew they couldn’t hold out much longer.

Nooroo swallowed hard. When he spoke next, his voice was loud and his words were slow, but they were in another language. Chinese, Gabriel thought.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow at him and smiled.

“In _French_ ,” he said quietly.

Nooroo’s facial expression changed again, this time from open fear to open defeat.

“The miraculous wielder fuses with the kwami whenever he or she utters the transformation phrase in the hearing of the kwami. Fusing with the kwami imbues the wielder of the Miraculous with the powers bestowed by that kwami.”

“Stop.”

Nooroo stopped.

“A transformation phrase. There’s a transformation phrase.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re not a spirit guide. You’re a kwami.”

“Yes.”

Gabriel gazed at Nooroo for a moment, and Nooroo gazed back. Then, in one swift motion, Gabriel stood, scooped Nooroo off the table, and headed toward the door.

* * *

Nooroo knew that he could quite easily phase out of Gabriel’s grasp, but there was really no point. Gabriel had all that he needed now.

His attempts to sidestep, evade, and misdirect the man (which were made difficult by the constraints of his bond to the Miraculous) had not worked for as long as he had hoped. In retrospect, Nooroo thought that his over-the-top literal interpretations of the man’s orders might’ve had a hand in just how quickly Gabriel had figured things out. If Nooroo had been a little less annoying, Gabriel might’ve been willing to trust him and accept his answers at face value for a while longer.

But it also would have been a lot less _fun_. And Nooroo had quickly judged from the beginning that once Gabriel figured out how to use Nooroo and the Miraculous, fun would be in short supply. It hadn’t taken longer than a minute of using his empathic abilities to read the emotions of everyone in the household to figure that one out.

Nooroo looked up at the man who carried him purposefully down the hallway toward the portrait that would lead them to his secret lair. Nooroo knew that he would outlive Gabriel, because he was a kwami and kwamis couldn’t die, while Gabriel was just a mortal man. But that didn’t make the next fifty or so years seem any less bleak. And who knew what would happen to the Miraculous and to Nooroo after that?

Nooroo wondered exactly how long it would be before he’d see Trixx again. Or Plagg. Or Tikki. He even missed straight-laced Wayzz. He’d give anything to see any of their faces right now.

As Nooroo traveled in the man’s vicelike grip down the elevator, he wondered, too, about young Wang Fu. Or rather, he was probably old Wang Fu by now. Was he still alive? Nooroo knew that the young man he remembered would have blamed himself for what had happened to the Butterfly Miraculous, and to Nooroo by extension. Nooroo’s last thought before he had been forced to lie dormant so many years ago was that he wanted to tell the young man that it was okay. Tell him not to blame himself for his mistake, because his intentions were good even if the execution had failed.

Nooroo gloomily noted that, even if Wang Fu were alive today to hear those words, he was unlikely to be so in fifty years.

Nooroo entered the lair via Gabriel’s hand, but then quite suddenly the hand disappeared. Nooroo dropped several centimeters before he adjusted to the unopposed force of gravity. Gabriel smiled down at him wickedly.

“Tell me the transformation phrase. And please, no more games.”

Nooroo’s gaze dropped to the floor and he struggled to make his face smooth. Finally, he lifted his eyes and when he spoke, he meant to sound brave. Instead, it came out as a whimper. “Nooroo, transform me.”

Gabriel nodded stiffly. He fumbled to put the brooch onto the front of his pajama shirt. Then, with a cool gaze leveled toward Nooroo, he intoned, “Nooroo, transform me.”


End file.
